First Rider's Call (61 page)

He limped through the arched entry of the portal into darkness greater than night. He put his hands out before him, groping in the air, but within a few paces he came to a wall of stone.
The
wall? It could be none other.

He settled his hands on it and opened his mind to it, just as he had been instructed. Silvery runes lit up around his hands.

Greetings, cousin,
the guardians seemed to whisper.

Alton closed his eyes, and sank into the wall.

SPURLOCK

Spurlock fumed as he stomped through the abandoned corridor, a pool of lamplight shivering around him. Never was the girl alone, never! How could he carry out the will of Blackveil if he couldn’t get near her?

Constantly she was in attendance to the king, which meant she was constantly surrounded by guards, Weapons, and witnesses. At other times she was training with that monster, Drent. Spurlock didn’t dare venture near the training yard, knowing how suspicious it would look for him, of all people, to be there. On top of everything, she was currently housed in the diplomatic wing, which was also heavily guarded.

He entered a chamber and was welcomed by the glow of Sergeant Uxton’s lamp. They chose a new room to meet in every time now, after nearly running into a Weapon in their old place. This room was located above the records room, so Spurlock planned the meeting for early in the morning before Dakrias Brown reported to duty, for the old glass domed roof was still in place above it, despite the construction of more castle overhead. Their lights would shine right through it.

As if responding to his thoughts, their lamps rippled across the glass in swirling colors. Spurlock had an impression of figures dancing to life and horses stretched out in full gallop, swords being swung, and pennants snapping in a breeze. He didn’t know what events the stained glass depicted, and he didn’t care. It was, no doubt, the usual heroic nonsense.

Uxton regarded him curiously. Spurlock hadn’t invited the other members of the sect, deeming them unlikely to be as helpful as Uxton. The others were outsiders, for all they had business on the castle grounds, and he feared their too frequent visits would draw unwanted attention, especially after the “intrusion” of Lord Varadgrim. Security on the grounds had tightened perceptibly. Uxton, in contrast, was an insider, with a valid reason to be within the castle. He wore the king’s own insignia, and the black and silver of Sacoridia.

“We have had, as you know, a call to action,” Spurlock said, without even the pretense of a greeting. He dispensed with the ritual used to open meetings, as well. He was too irritated with Karigan G’ladheon, and he perceived there was too little time. After a thousand years, the time was
now.
He would honor his ancestors and the empire in actions, if not rituals.

Uxton waited expectantly.

“Our lack of progress is a disgrace to our ancestors. Karigan G’ladheon is too well protected.”

“Not much we can do about it,” Uxton said with an indifferent shrug, “unless we can get her alone.”

That was not a helpful reply, but what could Spurlock expect from an uneducated man? He had brawn, but lacked intellect. One day Spurlock would surround himself with only the best minds. “Blackveil is arising. Here is a chance to further our glorious mission of resurrecting the Arcosian Empire, a chance we have not had in a thousand years, and all you can say is that there isn’t much we can do about it?”

Uxton hooked his thumb into his belt. “You have an idea of how to move things along?”

Spurlock frowned. Why was it he had to find all the answers? Why was he surrounded by simpletons? “We must lure her away from the king and his protectors, and out of the diplomatic wing, to someplace where we can trap her.”

“You just need the lure,” Uxton said. “I think I know a way. It will require a little planning, and the help of our brothers and sisters.”

Spurlock relaxed. Finally, something would get done. He would avenge those of Arcosia who had spilled their blood in these lands, and in so doing, prove his worthiness to the power in Blackveil. One day he would be accounted among the great of Second Empire, and his descendants would hold him in highest honor.

It was much too early to be up and about, to trudge up the Winding Way to the castle gate while the sun had not yet peeked over the rim of the world. Lanterns still ablaze, the guards at the gate had looked down at the bleary-eyed recordskeeper and chuckled.

“Ol’ Spurlock drivin’ ya hard again, lad?” one called down.

“Yes,” said Dakrias Brown, even though it wasn’t entirely true, but he would
never
tell these hard-bitten soldiers the real reason he needed to catch up on his work: that it had been upended by the spirits of the dead.

The guards made sympathetic noises and let him through the “small” gate, a normal-sized door in the big gate. Ever since the intrusion on castle grounds, and the burning of Rider barracks, they’d been shutting the big gate at sunset, and not reopening it till sunrise.

Dakrias had been slaving away in the records room, because of Spurlock, since the night of the intrusion. He had emerged from the castle only to witness the chaos outside, and the blaze of Rider barracks. Someone had died in the fire, and another was seriously wounded, both Riders. He hadn’t known Ephram Neddick, but he did know Mara Brennyn, and the thought of her grave wounds hurt him.

He yawned hugely as he made his way toward the castle. He would much rather hide in his room at Mistress Charon’s. Small as it was, it was blessedly un-haunted. What will the ghosts have left for him this morning? he wondered. More smashed crates? An overturned table or shelves? Papers he had labored to file in an organized manner now spilled across the floor?

These days Dakrias spent more time on hands and knees picking up than attending to his other duties. Good thing Spurlock had been so preoccupied with other matters of late. He rarely checked on the records room, and when he did, he seemed not to notice his surroundings.

He reluctantly mounted the steps to the main castle entrance. For days now he had been making this early morning walk to reclaim order from disorder. He’d also done some reading, surreptitiously, in the castle library. It contained too few books on ghosts, and most of the writings seemed too fanciful to be as true as the authors claimed.

One book, however, proved more useful and dealt with ghosts in a serious way, by examining and classifying their traits. It was called
Phantoms in My Attic,
by Lord Eldred Faintly. As Dakrias read, he thought, perhaps, he might be haunted by poltergeists, “. . . a type of ghost that leaves an unseemly mess in its wake,” Lord Faintly had written. But poltergeists were also prone to “violent manifestations and unbearable wailings.” Dakrias’ ghosts were not otherwise violent, nor did they wail.

Of the more mainstream ghosts, there were “the curious ghost, the friendly ghost, the sorrowful ghost, and the mischievous ghost.” Dakrias was not sure exactly what demeanor his ghosts displayed, though the havoc they wreaked in the records room might be construed as mischievous. He rolled his eyes.

Most ghosts feel they have left something undone,
Lord Faintly wrote,
and so they forever walk the Earth trying to right a wrong, or to see some activity to fruition. Until those goals are achieved, the ghost will not rest.

Dakrias had hit on his ghosts. They weren’t only a housekeeper’s nightmare, but a recordskeeper’s, too. Just why they sought attention, or just why they were disturbed, was probably something he would never learn. Unfortunately, according to Lord Faintly, the resolution of their problem was the only way to get rid of them. And how was he going to figure
that
out?

He sighed as he scuffed down the corridor toward the administrative wing. The only one who hadn’t laughed at his claim of ghosts haunting the records room was Karigan G’ladheon. Not only had she refrained from laughing, but the look in her eyes told him she believed.

If Dakrias hadn’t profoundly felt his duty to the king and people of Sacoridia, he would run from the castle all the way to his uncle’s farm in D’Ivary Province without looking back.

The hauntings had made a mess of his life. Where once he kept an impeccable and orderly records room, it now fringed on chaos, just like his personal life. He jumped at the slightest sound, and he felt like a cat afraid of its own shadow. The other clerks dropped books behind him just to see how high he’d jump.

He didn’t know how much more he could take, how many whispers in his ears, or the cool touches on the back of his neck . . . He wasn’t sure his heart could handle any new antics on their behalf.

Ghosts rarely alter their behavior,
Lord Faintly reassured.
They are cursed to repeat the same motions time after time unless, by good fortune, there is closure to whatever it is that anchors them to the Earth, and only then, at last, may they rest in peace.

Dakrias paused at the entry to the records room to ignite a candle with which he could light the lamps within, and unlocked the door. It swung inward with a screech. All else was silence.

He took a deep breath and stepped inside, and immediately a chaos of strewn books and papers fell into the circle of his candlelight. He groaned.

Then voices, distant whispery voices, raised the hair on the nape of his neck. Slowly he gazed upward. There, high above, were two spirits that manifested as colorful spheres of light.

Dakrias Brown’s ghosts had not read Lord Eldred Faintly’s book. No, indeed. They had gone and done something new and unexpected.

Dakrias’ eyes rolled to the back of his head, his candle extinguishing as he hit the floor in a dead faint.

KARIGAN RIDING

“No,”Karigansaid.

“No?” Drent’s eyes creased as he stared her down. He loomed over her, gigantic and bristling.

“No.” Her outward calm did not reflect the anger roiling inside her. Her emotions were far too raw to tolerate Drent and his abuse anymore.

“On the beam,” he growled.
“Now.”

Drent had raised the beam, and greased it, to test her “sure-footedness.” All she saw was a new opportunity for him to batter her senseless with his practice sword, and to create a spectacle for onlookers. Well, she’d give him a spectacle, all right.

“I’m done here,” Karigan said.

“Insubordination.” Drent smiled in anticipation. “You know what—”